UPDATED: Valley City to raise dikes to 24 feet; Fargo sending 400,000 sandbagsVALLEY CITY, N.D. – This city will raise its temporary dikes by another 18 inches and buy 200,000 sandbags from Fargo to prepare for a record crest on the Sheyenne River, officials said today.

By: Helmut Schmidt and Mike Nowatzki, The Forum, INFORUM

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VALLEY CITY, N.D. – This city will raise its temporary dikes by another 18 inches and buy 200,000 sandbags from Fargo to prepare for a record crest on the Sheyenne River, officials said today.

Fargo will provide 200,000 bags to Valley City and 200,000 to Barnes County at a cost of $1.20 apiece, which was the city’s cost of producing them, said Terry Ludlum, a supervisor at the city’s Sandbag Central.

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The corps will boost dam outflows this afternoon to 7,000 cubic feet per second, from the current rate of 6,500 cfs, said Rich Schueneman, resource manager at Baldhill Dam.

That’s expected to raise the river level in Valley City from the current level of 20.3 feet to a level of 20.7 or 20.8 feet, depending on local inflows that enter the river between the dam and Valley City. Either of those levels would break the record of 20.69 feet set in 2009, when flows from the dam measured 6,700 cfs, Schueneman said.

On Sunday or Monday, the corps will again increase flows from Baldhill to 7,500 cfs, which will be a record discharge rate for the dam. It’s expected to raise the river in Valley City to 21.2 to 21.3 feet, Schueneman said.

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Valley City’s temporary dikes are built to a river level of about 22.5 feet, meaning the dikes would have just more than a foot of freeboard when flows hit 7,500 cfs, City Administrator Jon Cameron said.

“They are already very stressed,” he said of the dikes.

They’ll have to endure that stress for a while, Schueneman said, as flows will likely remain above 7,000 cfs for about 10 days.

Flows on the Sheyenne at Warwick and Cooperstown upstream of the dam remain above 2009 levels, he said.

“It’s the volume of the water that’s coming down the river,” he said. “It’s just historic.”

National Guard members are monitoring the city’s dikes 24 hours a day and responding to weak spots as they pop up, Cameron said.

Ludlum said it’s not known exactly how many sandbags Fargo has in reserve, because unused sandbags are still being transported from neighborhoods back into storage.